May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
While mental health and its impacts are increasingly becoming a mainstream topic in our personal lives, the subject remains often overlooked or misunderstood in the workplace. As an employer, the effort to understand and support the mental health needs of your employees is not just the right thing to do, it's also crucial for maintaining a productive and engaged workforce.
In this blog post, we'll discuss the cost of ignoring the mental well-being of your workforce and how uncovering how your employees are handling workplace pressures, coping with stress, and feeling overall can help you craft a supportive and productive environment, ultimately positioning you better to attract and retain top talent and remain competitive in your industry.
The Business Impact of Employee Mental Health
In today's high-pressure work environments, employee mental health is an important business issue that can be disastrous to ignore. The costs of unaddressed mental distress can easily impact the bottom line through absenteeism, turnover, workplace accidents, and more.
Forward-thinking organizations can get ahead of the curve by prioritizing mental wellness as strategically as any other business initiative. Poor employee mental health doesn't just impact individual employees - it can create a ripple effect that drags down morale, hurts productivity, and impedes collaboration and innovation.
The Cost of Mental Health Issues
The statistics around mental health issues are staggering!
- The World Health Organization estimates depression and anxiety costs the global workforce $1 trillion per year in lost productivity.1
- Depression, anxiety, and other untreated mental health conditions cost U.S. employers over $200 billion per year in absenteeism and medical costs, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School.2
- Deloitte estimates the combination of turnover and lost productivity stemming from poor mental health costs companies between 3-4% of their total annual revenues.3
- 79% of employees experienced work-related stress in the previous month, according to the American Psychological Association's (APA) 2021 Work and Well-being Survey.4
The High Returns of Mental Wellness Programs
An environment that destigmatizes mental health support and provides adequate resources can boost employee engagement, retention, and overall performance.
According to Deloitte, workplace mental health programs, such as mental health awareness efforts, EAP services, and counseling resources, have an ROI as high as $4 for every $1 invested for some companies. Those going above and beyond with initiatives like mental health training for managers, fully integrated mental and physical health benefits, stigma reduction campaigns, on-site counseling, and therapy services can potentially see up to a $9 return per dollar invested.5
Employee mental wellness investments can see returns in several areas:
- Reduced absenteeism
- Lower medical & disability costs
- Improved employee productivity and engagement
- Stronger talent acquisition and retention
- Better team cohesion and decision-making
- Decreased workplace safety incidents
Designing Effective Mental Health Strategies Through Research
In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, supporting employee mental wellness is no longer optional - it's a key driver of productivity, retention, and overall success. Every organization has unique needs, stressors, dynamics, and potential barriers when it comes to mental wellness. Blindly copying another company's approach is unlikely to move the needle. This is where partnering with an experienced market research firm will help.
Successfully implementing mental health resources isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Conducting safe and confidential employee research that encourages open and honest sharing about employee experiences can help your organization begin to understand the mental health culture within your workplace.
The right research can help you identify focus areas such as acute work-related stress factors and anxiety sources, manager-employee relationship issues, gaps between existing resources and employee needs, and potential stigmas or resistance to engaging with mental health support programs.
With robust data and newfound insights, companies can design mental health strategies and resources specifically for their employees. Custom employee research will provide critical guidance including: assessing needs, designing and refining programs, and driving engagement and maximizing impact over time.
The smart move is partnering with market research experts like MDRG, to fully understand your organization's needs and help you unlock the tremendous ROI of mental health investment.
Contact us today to get started!
1https://www.who.int/health-topics/depression#tab=tab_2
2https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Mental-health-problems-in-the-workplace
3https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/addressing-mental-health.html
4https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/work-well-being/compounding-pressure-2021
by Clixlogix 
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